"Rei."
Two carriages had arrived.
A guard who dismounted from one of them called out to Rei.
Rei knew the man. They had crossed paths several times during the Cobolt incident that winter, and had continued to run into each other frequently since.
"I'd like to say thanks for coming... but the moment they saw you, they got scared," Rei replied, glancing at the Green Demi-humans who had put distance between themselves and the guards before he'd even noticed.
The guard, however, was at a loss—he hadn't particularly done anything.
"Even if you say that, what did we actually do?"
"I don't think you did anything special. Maybe it's just because you're all wearing the same clothes?"
"Hey, don't be unreasonable. Guards not wearing uniforms would be a problem."
"I get that. But those guys probably saw something like your unified uniforms and..."
"Set?"
"Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!"
Rei had been mid-conversation with the guard when he noticed Set suddenly stand up, staring at a single point and letting out a cry brimming with battle intent. He frowned.
But the moment he understood where Set was looking, he immediately drew the Death Scythe and the Twilight Spear from his Misty Ring.
"H-Hey, Rei?"
"●●? ●●●●●●? ●●●●●●!"
Rei's sudden action drew exclamations from both the guard he'd just been speaking with and the male Green Demi-human who had been negotiating with him.
The male Green Demi-human in particular, alarmed by the abrupt movement, showed clear wariness that they might be under attack. But when he realized Rei and Set were staring not at them, but at the spatial rift where they themselves had appeared, he immediately shouted to his companions.
What those words meant was a mystery to Rei, the adventurers, and the guards alike. Even so, when the Green Demi-humans unanimously scattered from their previous positions and fled toward Rei's group, it was clear enough—they were being told to get away. And then...
"We've got visitors. Stay alert."
Countless ripples appeared in the space before them—far more than before. As Rei shouted, as if his words had been the trigger, figures emerged from those ripples. Visitors from another world, presumably.
But these visitors were different from the last group. They weren't a single race.
One group consisted of Green Demi-humans, like the ones who had first teleported here.
The other was something that could only be called Lizardmen.
What set them apart from ordinary Lizardmen, however, was that these were clearly wearing metal armor and carrying weapons.
Lizardmen existed in this world too, but their intelligence wasn't high enough to build a civilization of their own. They often used weapons and armor like longswords and shields, but those were typically stolen from adventurers or otherwise scavenged.
The Lizardmen emerging from the spatial ripples, however, wore identical armor and carried identical weapons—just as the guards wore matching uniforms. That clearly indicated they hadn't looted their equipment, but belonged to an organized unit or army.
And what surprised Rei most of all... was that they were attacking the Green Demi-humans who had emerged alongside them.
Many of the Green Demi-humans were already injured. Quite a few bore wounds even worse than those Rei had treated with potions earlier.
"●●! ●●●●!"
One Lizardman wearing particularly ornate armor barked a sharp command. At those words, the other Lizardmen broke off their attacks on the Green Demi-humans and swiftly regrouped around the one who had shouted.
That alone told Rei everything he needed to know: these Lizardmen possessed high intelligence and the discipline to follow orders from above without hesitation.
"...What do you think?"
Unsure how to read the situation, Rei turned to the guard for his opinion.
But the guard was equally lost. Having just watched Lizardmen teleport in from nowhere and attack Green Demi-humans, he had no idea how to respond to Rei's question either.
Everything unfolding before him was utterly incomprehensible. He'd been given a general briefing, but this far exceeded anything he could have anticipated.
"I... honestly, even I have no idea what we should do..."
The guard's bewildered reply trailed off. But whether he'd spotted them or not, the Lizardman who had just issued orders—the apparent highest-ranking one present—began walking toward them.
"●●●●●●●●, ●●●? ●●●●●●●●●●●●"
As before, the words were completely incomprehensible, just like the Green Demi-humans' language. Even so, Rei could read the atmosphere well enough to tell the creature wasn't just asking something—it was interrogating them.
What do we do? Rei shot a glance at the guard, but the guard only looked back, his eyes clearly asking Rei to take the lead.
If these were soldiers from a foreign nation, the guard would have stepped forward himself. But these were Lizardmen—not just ordinary ones, but beings that clearly possessed human-level intelligence. They were a complete unknown to him, and that was precisely why he deferred to Rei, who as an adventurer was accustomed to dealing with the unknown.
Accepting the responsibility, Rei stepped forward without raising his weapons, holding the Death Scythe and Twilight Spear with their blades pointed down.
The Lizardman gave Rei's appearance a dismissive once-over. Seeing that the weapons he carried were two long implements that would clearly be unwieldy for someone of his build, it looked at him with obvious contempt.
If the Lizardman had been from Gilm—or anywhere in this world, for that matter—it might have recognized the adventurer who wielded a scythe and spear simultaneously and commanded Gryphon Seto.
But if, as Rei suspected, they were from another world, then a small man carrying two oversized weapons wouldn't register as any kind of threat.
Had the Lizardman the chance to observe how Rei moved, it might have sensed his strength. But since it had approached the spot where Rei and the guard had been standing, it never had that opportunity.
And so, to the Lizardman, Rei must have looked like a fool who didn't know his own limits, lugging around weapons he couldn't use and getting in the way on top of it.
With an expression mixing scorn and irritation, the Lizardman swung its longsword down at Rei—
"●●!"
Rei parried the longsword strike with the Twilight Spear and drove the shaft of the Death Scythe into the Lizardman's body. The blow sent it flying several meters sideways, slamming it hard into a tree trunk. It lost consciousness on impact and crumpled to the ground.
"H-Hey, Rei! What the hell are you thinking?!"
The guard shouted at him.
Rei shot back, visibly annoyed. "What? So I should've just let myself get cut?"
"That's not what I'm saying. But with your skills, couldn't you have handled it with evasion alone?"
What surprised Rei, though, was that even as they exchanged words, the Lizardman soldiers didn't swarm them.
Of course, with facial structures so vastly different from a human's, it was hard to read what the Lizardmen were thinking or feeling. For a fleeting moment, Rei almost wished they'd come charging in screeching like the monster Lizardmen he'd fought before—at least that would've been simpler to deal with.
Be that as it may, the situation had already made it nearly impossible to treat the Lizardmen as friendly.
(No, that was never really on the table.)
The Green Demi-humans had never shown any hostility toward Rei's group, so befriending them had been natural. But the Lizardmen? Even as they teleported in, many had already been attacking the Green Demi-humans who arrived alongside them. Given that, Rei—having built a friendly relationship with the Green Demi-humans—naturally chose to shield them.
"So, what's the plan here?" the guard asked, sounding somewhat exasperated.
He'd come here on orders to protect demi-humans whose language no one could understand, only to walk straight into this chaos. It was perfectly understandable that he wanted to scream, What the hell am I supposed to do?!
"You're asking me? For now, the Green Demi-humans are friendly. If we need to negotiate something, we can work it out with them. Though since we can't communicate verbally, it'll probably have to be through gestures."
"You say that like it's someone else's problem... well, I guess that goes for me too."
The guard's orders were, strictly speaking, limited to protecting the Green Demi-humans. Actual discussions and negotiations would fall to Daskar or his subordinates—Gilm's upper leadership. In that sense, the guard didn't need to overthink it.
"Alright then. The Green Demi-humans are on our side, so they're fine. The real question is what to do about those Lizardmen."
Rei muttered the words and turned his gaze toward the Lizardmen. The ones on the receiving end of that look recoiled almost reflexively.
They had just watched the strongest among them get swatted down in a single blow. It was clear they'd already concluded they stood no chance against Rei.
Seeing this, the guard reasoned that disarmament might actually be feasible and proposed it.
"Hey, think you could get those Lizardmen to disarm?"
"Yeah... disarmament. I know we should, but we can't exactly talk to them."
Rei would have loved to sit them down and hear their side of the story. But under the current circumstances, nothing he said would get through. He'd been about to resign himself to that fact when he noticed something—fear had crept into the Lizardmen's eyes. Maybe this really would work.
(Then again...)
Even with disarmament looking feasible, the Green Demi-humans were still a concern. They were friendly toward Rei, but judging from the state they'd been in when they arrived, they were clearly hostile to the Lizardmen. No—not just hostile. They were being one-sidedly oppressed.
If the Lizardmen were disarmed right now, there was a real chance the Green Demi-humans would seize the opportunity and retaliate.
"I'm not sure if it'll work, but I'll give it a try. Keep an eye on the Green Demi-humans, though. They might go after the Lizardmen if the opening's there."
"Got it."
The guard nodded quickly once he grasped Rei's concern. He also considered whether to order someone to restrain the downed Lizardman commander.
Leaving the guard to it, Rei approached the cluster of Lizardmen.
They retreated several steps at the sight of him advancing with the Death Scythe and Twilight Spear in hand. Their strongest fighter had gone down in one hit. They knew they couldn't win.
(At this rate, disarming them should be straightforward.)
With that in mind, Rei angled the blade of the Death Scythe—the more visibly menacing of his two weapons—toward the Lizardmen.
That alone was enough to make them shrink back further, cowering.
Rei looked at the weapons they held and made a simple gesture: drop them on the ground.
But the Lizardmen didn't understand. They stared at Rei with bewildered, awestruck, and fearful eyes, unable to grasp what he was asking.
Then, cutting through the tension, a voice rang out.
"●●●●●●●●!"
It was the male Green Demi-human who had been interacting with Rei. Thanks to the time they'd spent together, he had apparently understood what Rei was demanding.
At those words, the Lizardmen let their weapons clatter to the ground.